Guidelines
After consulting with a couple Kansas experts in the fields of journalism and online media, I have decided to implement a couple new guidelines on comments on the blog.
1. Comments that are meant to attack fellow commenters, rather than debating a topic, will be removed. I’ll allow quite a bit to be posted (I don’t censor anything at first – I have to catch something after it has been posted) but if you spend time attacking a fellow blogger, I’ll delete your comments.
2. Personal attacks on specific private citizens will be removed in most instances. Even if only part of a comment is a personal attack, the entire comment will be removed. This is not the forum for that sort of activity. Elected officials, however, need to know they have put themselves in the public eye so they will have to develop a thicker skin when dealing with the public. Government employees in positions of leadership will also face further scrutiny than the average person so they too will need to be ready for more specific debate by the public on this blog.
I hope you all understand why I need to do this and again, I hope everyone aspires to add constructive debate to the news and events in Washington County.
A word about privacy and censorship
I do not know who the majority of you are. There are a handful of people who have told me their blog names and a few I believe I’ve figured out, but I am just like many of the readers of this blog – trying to figure out who some of these folks are. But I’m okay with that.
When you register, if you attach your blog name to your e-mail address, I can often figure out who you are, but your secret is safe with me and I am the only one who sees the registration e-mail. In addition, if I do know who you are but you are otherwise anonymous or even if you have multiple anonymous names, your secret is safe with me (except for my wife since we have no secrets between us.) Just like if I had an confidential source for a story, nothing less than a court order would get the information out of me. And even then, I will work with our lawyer before even the court order works. In this industry, we take privacy seriously, otherwise we wouldn’t have any “sources” left.
As for censorship, that is a swear word among serious newspaper people. I believe I have censored two posts and two sentences out of another post on this blog so far. I probably should have done more, but that goes against what I do and this is something on which I will dig my heels into the ground when pushed.
However, I do wish folks would not use names when complaining about specific individuals. In a small county like this, there are sure to be readers who are closely related to that person reading the post, if not the people themselves. I’d say, act like that person is in the room listening, because digitally, they very well could be. That’s why I suggest using your name if you want to bash someone.
Otherwise people get angry and since they don’t know who you are, they call me and blame me for your comments. I can handle it, but it is not like I enjoy it. I have better things to do then get lectured for something I didn’t say.
Beyond that, I’m happy to have created this forum for the community to air their thoughts on a little bit of everything and I hope you all continue to enjoy being part of the Backroads Newsroom.
